Analog SFF, November 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  "Fifty-five,” corrected Shad. We were both old film buffs, but Shad's knowledge of films was encyclopedic, as befits a dedicated thespian.

  "Set a pigeon to catch a pigeon."

  "I'm going through Pureledge's site right now. Pureledge has an office here in Exeter on Castle Street. It runs three wings of three hundred and twenty birds per wing—” Shad paused for a moment. “Ledge marshals is what they're called."

  "Shad, did you get any fiber trace off the body?"

  "Red fiber. Only one thread visible, the rest microscopic. All of the fibers are centered on the same impact point that broke all these bones. You have red fiber up there?"

  "All microscopic. The impact pattern on the wall shows the bulk of the fiber trace considerably off center, though. Between that and the blood spatter, when the bird hit this wall his bones had already been broken and had already been bleeding. What's your guess on the fibers?"

  "It was wrapped around whatever killed this bird."

  "Shad, do these ledge marshals maintain continuous sync while on duty?"

  "Their site doesn't say and no one right now is answering the phone. Jaggs, did you know this was how they were keeping pigeons from nesting on building ledges?"

  "I noticed a dozen years ago or so in London when they took down the pigeon netting from several of the buildings there. I never thought to question why. Pigeons still seemed the same. Fewer of them, perhaps. Buildings and walks were remarkably cleaner. Get in touch with Pureledge Exeter and have them check vitals on their stasis beds. What's on the other sides of these walls? A computer establishment on the northeast side, right?"

  "Dell Bio & Mech. It's an AB tech gift shop. In the building on the opposite side is Madame Fifi's Feather, Scale, and Fur. She's an amdroid stylist."

  "The vic was killed elsewhere, Shad. Why dump the body on Parliament?"

  "Say, Jaggs, how come this—it's not wide enough to call an alley—how come this particular crack between two buildings is called a street?"

  "I'll have you know, Shad, Exeter's Parliament Street holds the record as the narrowest street in the world. As it was explained to me on a tour when I first came to Exeter, it had to do with some act of Parliament in the nineteenth century. The burghers on the city council took exception to the act, but really couldn't do anything in retaliation except deliver an insult to the body that passed it. Hence they named the narrowest thoroughfare in the city Parliament Street. Rather silly, really."

  "Not at all,” objected Shad. “I mean, here we are centuries later and Exeter still has a Parliament Street. That is vendetta-grade grudge.” Shad's mech nodded. “This town is really beginning to grow on me,” he said as he streaked off toward High to release the scene to the FMEs. Despairing for Shad's value system, I ascended to the roof, flew grids on each, but found no cameras, latents, trace, impressions, feathers, scales, nor fur.

  I had just completed my examination when I was joined by Shad's micro coming over the High Street edge. “Someone at Pureledge finally answered the phone,” he announced. “ID on the imprint is a six-month Pureledge rookie named Darcy Flanagan, eighty-seven, resides in a flat at Seventeen Hoopern Street. He began his shift at three this afternoon and he and his flight leader belong to 712 Squadron. The Seven-Twelve patrols the Cathedral Church of St. Peter."

  "Flight leader? Squadron?"

  "That's what they call them. The fellow on the phone said the scuttlebutt in the ready room at Castle Field is that Jerry got young Darcy."

  "Jerry? What is he talking about? Germans?"

  "'Hop in the old crate and tally ho! Chocks away!’ Jaggs, it was like talking to Fowler in Chicken Run."

  Fowler, the aged and absurdly militaristic dotty rooster in the old Nick Park animated feature—voice done by Benjamin Whitrow—seemed to think he was in the Royal Air Force rather than a chicken yard. Every AI, and particularly every amdroid, knew the classic Chicken Run almost by rote. Decades ago the beheading-of-Edwina scene on the telly and bio blogs in combination with the U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Grant v. Hudder helped put the AI Rights Act in Britain over the top. “What did he mean, ‘young Darcy'? You said the fellow was eighty-seven."

  "Average age of ‘the lads’ is ninety-three,” countered Shad.

  "I see."

  "Ledge marshals maintain continuous sync between bodies and bios, which would be good for us except they checked what they call their barracks. Darcy Flanagan the human natural is dead."

  "Poor fellow. Did they say how?"

  "Sudden massive heart attack according to the stasis bed readout. Too severe for the bed to maintain him and he was past revival by the time their medical mech reached him. Pureledge has a lot of really old pensioners as ledge marshals. They make a little cash and for a few hours a day they get to fly, serve a useful purpose, and feel young and pain free, according to the fellow on the phone, a Mr. James Duggan. Duggan says six to eight of the old coves cack out in the barrack racks every year."

  "Hard done by Flanagan's demise, was he?"

  "The poor guy could hardly butter his crumpet. Jaggs, the stasis bed recorded Flanagan's death at eight minutes to five this evening. The pigeon bio died eleven seconds later. Unless Flanagan managed to bust up his own pigeon suit like that, it's murder. That means media.” The duck tossed his next question around in his head a bit before reluctantly asking it. “What do we do about Parker?"

  I thought on that. “To be perfectly candid, Shad, I'm not terribly sanguine about having our end of the inquiry represented by an incontinent gorilla with self-esteem issues."

  His micro swung around and looked deeply into the shadows. “Man, I can't believe I've come down to this. When I was the spokescritter for that insurance company, I used to have staff, bill polish, ermine feather extensions, my own dressing room. You should've seen my apartment in New York, Jaggs. I had a fountain in my living room! Ledge marshals. Gorilla poop."

  "Those, Shad, are the challenging, exciting, ever-changing facets of a fulfilling career in ABCD law enforcement."

  He dropped a heavy sigh and shook all over. “Sorry about the whining. About Parker, the division doesn't need any more bad air. Do we go to Matheson and take over the case?"

  I pushed Shad's suggestion around in my mind for a moment. Neither Shad nor I were there to hurt other cops, especially those who, like us, had been flushed down into ABCD due to mishap, misunderstanding, or murder. I'd already put a smudge on Parker's record by refusing to work with him. The whole Parliament Street case was looking, however, like a giant slapstick aimed directly at ABCD Devon's collective posterior.

  "Back to the cruiser, Shad. We copy into our own suits, and secure our evidence. Then we report to the command post and see where things go from there."

  * * * *

  In the cruiser, copied into our own skins, Shad gave the cruiser instructions to come up on Broadgate by a circuitous route. By swinging out over Queen Street, heading southeast, and doubling back over St. Peters Cathedral, we might lessen our chances of attracting notice.

  Shad faced me. “What if Parker cut back on the bananas? Less in, less out."

  "Been tried. The fellow is addicted. He has them squirreled away everywhere. A few months before you came to the Devon office, Shad, Parker and I were assigned to represent ABCD at an award ceremony at the Royal Diana Devon & Cornwall Force Museum theater."

  "Handing out attaboys to the local blue?"

  "Yes, although we call the medals gongs. A very solemn occasion officiated by Chief Constable Crowe. In attendance were two Members of Parliament, the Earl of Devon, and Her Royal Highness Princess Mehitabel. Matheson and I took Parker's bananas away, dehydrated him, and tried to keep an eye on him. Nevertheless, he managed to tuck away a bunch or two before the ceremony."

  "Naw. He didn't,” said Shad.

  "Oh, indeed he did, ducky. What's more, Parker didn't even notice he'd done it. Nothing quite like a fellow dropping his load before royalty right in the middle of bleeding ‘God Save Th
e King'."

  "Make the news, did it?"

  "Shad, Matheson's office was showered with media thank-you notes and fruit baskets.

  "What'd the superintendent say when you all got back to the tower?"

  "He called us into his office, pointed at his telly, and stared at Parker, his finger trembling. Matheson's face went bright red and he did a respectable impression of a beached cod. Then he waved us out of his office, came up behind us, and slammed the door."

  "British reserve, wot, wot, Jaggers old sock?” he said using his Fowler voice.

  "Frightening, actually. The superintendent really does bear a striking resemblance to John Dillinger. I half expected to be perforated by a Tommy gun. He ordered Parker into therapy."

  "To potty train him?” asked Shad.

  "That's what it amounted to.” I looked down through my window. The red air-vehicle warning lights above the crenellated spires crowning the Norman towers of St. Peters glowed softly on and off below. “He went faithfully twice each week and Matheson received in return a lot of cleaning bills and the therapist's conclusion that gorillas—gorilla bios, in any event—cannot be trained in that regard. There are no internal warning signs noticeable to the gorilla, so the gorilla simply delivers wherever it is whenever a shipment comes in."

  "Like the old joke,” observed Shad.

  "Yes. Wherever he wants."

  Shad glanced down through his side window. “Oh boy. Hey, Jaggs? We're over Broadgate. I don't see the ABCD van.” He placed the cruiser in stationary hover.

  He banked the cruiser my way and I looked down. Opposite Dell and Madame Fifi's side of High Street was St. Petrocks. Between the block upon which that church stood and the block opposite the Guildhall was Broadgate: a short, wide, shop-festooned thoroughfare connecting High Street and Cathedral Yard. Parked in Broadgate were three tellynet media vans, a blogosphere pool mobile, a Devon Forensic Medical Examiner's van, and a constabulary electric, presumably Sergeant Dunn's. There were no vehicles of any kind belonging to ABCD and no ABCD personnel I recognized, not even a furtive mountain gorilla in the shadows stealthily evacuating his bowels.

  "Bugger,” I remarked.

  Shad's comment was earthier but equally apt.

  * * * *

  There was nothing to do but head to Heavitree Consolidated Police Administration Tower in which the constabulary's Exeter Station, Devon ABCD Interpol, and the Devon Magistrate's Court were headquartered. As the cruiser came down from the St. James—Heavitree Air Vector Corridor, Shad brought us in over St. Luke's College and Heavitree Hospital as we circled down to the sky dock on top of the tower. As we approached we could see that the media had already gathered far below at street level entrance. Up on the roof by himself someone very large, dark, hairy, and dejected was skulking next to the landing target. It was DC Parker. After coming in and docking in our assigned slot, we got out of the cruiser and walked across the target to the fellow.

  As we approached Parker, Shad said to him in his Fowler voice, “I say, old hairball, the ruddy bloomin’ corpus is in the middle of flippin’ Parliament Street. Don't Heavitree Tower strike you as rather inconvenient for a local command post, wot, wot?"

  Upon witnessing Shad's passive-aggressive performance, Parker's massive shoulders sagged even farther as his incredibly ugly head hung down, his knuckles dragging against the rooftop.

  "Terribly sorry, Inspector Jaggers,” he said, his voice rumbling eloquently in posh Oxford-educated tones. The urgency of his current predicament appeared to have frightened off his usual ape-of-the-people Estuary affectation. “I had the van on Broadgate, sir, but the tellies, bloggies, and shutter rats were everywhere waiting for me! Peering in the windows, underfoot, poking in their heads, all of them on geek hunts, and, good lord, the questions. Cameras ... all aimed at the van. It was like they were waiting for me to ... you know."

  "Yes,” I responded. “I know."

  "I didn't want to let down the side again, inspector. I couldn't've fit in that narrow passage in any event. Wouldn't the tellies love seeing me try, though? That's why I asked for someone else to work the scene. I'm so grateful to you and DS Shad."

  "You did the right thing, Parker,” I said.

  "You see why I had to get out of there, don't you?” The gorilla was motionless for a split second, then grew a bit wild-eyed. He suddenly grunted loudly, smacked his fist against the edge of the concrete landing target, cracking it. Suddenly DC Parker began turning about in a tiny circle, waving his heavily muscled arms above his head.

  "Steady,” I cautioned as I backed away, almost stumbling over Shad who had managed to get behind me.

  Parker stopped, lowered his arms, and slumped. “Sorry, but will no one in this bloody city ever forget that damned awards ceremony?” He thumped his chest angrily with his fists. Seeing that he startled me again and caused Shad to take wing, he said “Sorry. Terribly sorry, sir. Sorry sergeant.” He was even more crestfallen.

  Shad settled further away from the gorilla. “Keep cool, Ralph. Okay?"

  "Yes. Sorry."

  "What seems to be the trouble, Parker?” I prompted.

  He sadly shook his head, his gaze somewhere around my feet. “It all began at Royal Diane. Before that ceremony I was just another cop bio trying to make a place for himself in ABCD. After that ceremony I was a worldwide joke. There were tourists here last summer from Kazakhstan, inspector. From Kazakhstan! Their children had these bloody little animated stuffed gorilla toys! They sing ‘God Save The King’ and then poop little licorice sweeties! I simply can't bear it!"

  "I never got my own action figure,” muttered the duck sullenly.

  Parker held out his massive hands. “Princess Mehitabel has forgiven me. I wrote her soon after..."

  "After the goods were delivered,” completed still sullen Shad.

  "Her Highness's secretary wrote me a few weeks ago. He wrote—well, his letter said that Princess Mehitabel understands completely, stuff happens and not to worry myself over it. Water under the bridge.” He let out his breath with what appeared to be his remaining resolve and looked up at me. “Inspector, should I tell the superintendent I can't handle the Parliament Street inquiry? If I lead this case, the media'll make a laughingstock of all of us."

  Shad and I glanced at each other for a beat; the duck shut his eyes, shrugged, and nodded once at me. I faced the gorilla. “Detective Constable Parker, you have an inquiry to run and I suggest you run it. Shad and I have worked the scene and we're prepared to brief you on the evidence and the progress of the investigation. We will also back you up however we can. Leading this case will give you much needed experience. I expect you to make the most of it."

  There was a touch of panic in Parker's expression. “It's not just a dead pigeon, is it, sir?"

  "It's murder,” said Shad. “Murder most foul,” he added with a straight face.

  "Shall we get on with the briefing?” I suggested.

  "Yes, inspector.” Parker looked up at me with sad yellowish eyes. “What ever shall I do about the media?"

  "Later we'll need to prepare something. Right now we need to know how you wish us to proceed."

  Parker stared at me for two seconds, then frowned, reared back until he was at his full height, puffed out his chest, and bellowed, “Very well!” He thumped his chest with both fists several times, and bellowed, “Very well, then! We'll grasp the nettle, shall we? On to Room 914!” On his knuckles and feet he scooted toward the access door, nearly ripped it off its hinges, and all thirty-five stone of him disappeared down into the stairwell, his parting cry of “Jam tomorrow!” echoing from below.

  Something of stunned silence descended upon the roof. I glanced at my partner. “What happened to his accent?” asked Shad.

  I shook my head. “For some reason he's returned to Received Pronunciation. I believe he only adopted Estuary to fit in, which he never did."

  "I hate it when that happens."

  "Oxford graduate, you know."

&nbs
p; "I'll be a monkey's uncle."

  I hoisted an eyebrow in Shad's direction. “Murder most foul?"

  The mallard nodded. “Murder Most Foul, directed by George Pollock, starring Margaret Rutherford, 1964.” Looking sideways at me, he said, “Foul, fowl, dead pigeon—get it? Huh? Huh?"

  "Yes, yes. I quite get it,” I acknowledged painfully. “Thank you."

  "Any time. Give any thought to how we're going to work this case with Parker running it? I mean, he gave you the perfect out. Why didn't you take it?"

  "As I recall, Shad, you nodded at me."

  "That's because I'm a big marshmallow. You're a tough old ex-London Metro murder cop and our leader. We depend upon you to keep us out of silly predicaments."

  I frowned deeply. “Shad, surely you see if Parker quits this case because he's frightened of the media—"

  "—among other things,” interrupted Shad.

  "For any reason. Parker's not stupid. He's just—"

  "Six cashews crazier than a Nutter Bar."

  "Shad, if he doesn't lead this case and win doing it, he'll be useless in the future both to ABCD and himself. We cannot stand by and watch that happen."

  "I suppose not.” Shad examined my face for a moment cocking his head to one side. “There's something else, though, isn't there?"

  My gaze rested momentarily on the distant ground vehicle lights circling the St. Sidwell Roundabout west of the tower. “This insane degree of media attention over what appears to be a less-than-interesting case. Add to that the timing."

  Shad nodded. “You and I suddenly get the evening off, Towson's out sick, Parker's holding the fort all by his lonesome."

  I nodded. “The one detective who because of his copy phobia and size couldn't possibly fit into the scene of the crime, the one detective who with each public bowel movement brings into question the seriousness of amdroids being in law enforcement at all, he's the one who catches the case."

  "I checked the tower call log, Jaggs. Your newshound buddy Fido got the call to come to Parliament Street a good fifteen minutes before the Exeter cops notified ABCD."